IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 3, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 2009

23

Analysis, Design, and Control of a Transcutaneous

Power Regulator for Artificial Hearts
Qianhong Chen, Member, IEEE, Siu Chung Wong, Member, IEEE, Chi K. Tse, Fellow, IEEE, and
Xinbo Ruan, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractBased on a generic transcutaneous transformer

model, a remote power supply using a resonant topology for use in
artificial hearts is analyzed and designed for easy controllability
and high efficiency. The primary and secondary windings of the
transcutaneous transformer are positioned outside and inside the
human body, respectively. In such a transformer, the alignment
and gap may change with external positioning. As a result, the
coupling coefficient of the transcutaneous transformer is also
varying, and so are the two large leakage inductances and the
mutual inductance. Resonant-tank circuits with varying resonant-frequency are formed from the transformer inductors and
external capacitors. For a given range of coupling coefficients,
an operating frequency corresponding to a particular coupling
coefficient can be found, for which the voltage transfer function is
insensitive to load. Prior works have used frequency modulation
to regulate the output voltage under varying load and transformer
coupling. The use of frequency modulation may require a wide
control frequency range which may extend well above the load
insensitive frequency. In this paper, study of the input-to-output
voltage transfer function is carried out, and a control method is
proposed to lock the switching frequency at just above the load
insensitive frequency for optimized efficiency at heavy loads.
Specifically, operation at above resonant of the resonant circuits
is maintained under varying coupling-coefficient. Using a digital-phase-lock-loop (PLL), zero-voltage switching is achieved
in a full-bridge converter which is also programmed to provide
output voltage regulation via pulsewidth modulation (PWM). A
prototype transcutaneous power regulator is built and found to
to perform excellently with high efficiency and tight regulation
under variations of the alignment or gap of the transcutaneous
transformer, load and input voltage.
Index TermsPhase-locked loop (PLL), pulsewidth modulation
(PWM) control, resonant converter, transcutaneous power regulator.

Manuscript received December 19, 2007; revised June 16, 2008. First
published January 21, 2009; current version published January 28, 2009. This
work was supported in part by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council under
grant PolyU 5306/06E. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor R.
Sarpeshkar.
Q. Chen was with the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. She is now with the College of
Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Nanjing 210016, China.
S. C. Wong and C. K. Tse are with the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong (e-mail:
enscwong@polyu.edu.hk; encktse@polyu.edu.hk).
X. Ruan is with the College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University
of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China, and also with the College of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Huazhong University of Science
and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBCAS.2008.2006492

I. INTRODUCTION

DVANCES in biomedical technology allow artificial organs and monitoring devices to be implanted into human
body for the extension and improvement of human lives [1].
The implants must operate inside the body for a considerable
period of time and communicate with the outside world wirelessly for exchange of medical data and commands. Among different forms of power sources, chemical rechargeable batteries
are by far the safest and most popular form of power for implants. Rechargeable batteries are recharged remotely through
the human skin via inductive links.
Totally implantable systems minimize the risk of infection
and improve patients mobility. Reliable and safe methods of
providing power to the implants are the key factors in achieving
totally implantable systems. Inductive link technology is
widely used for powering different kinds of implants [2][6].
Air-core type transformers have been used and studied in
[2][5], [7][10] and in particular the work in [2], [3], [6], [8],
employed class E power converters for low power applications
and for achieving space saving. For higher power applications,
such as powering an artificial heart for a power level of 1060
W, magnetic cores are used [11][23]. The input power to a
biological heart is approximately 15 W at resting condition,
and 35 W under heavy exercise [18]. Equivalent load resistance
ranging from 9.6 to 48 is therefore expected for a converter
that gives an output voltage of 24 V. To compensate for the
large leakage inductances due to transcutaneous separation, a
resonant type converter of class D has been used [10], [14],
[18], [21], [22], [24]. Four combinations of stagger-tuned
link circuits have been proposed in [24] for compensating
the leakage inductances of the transcutaneous transformer.
Frequency modulation at frequencies between the two resonant
frequencies of the doubly tuned tank circuits has been used to
achieve coupling insensitive gain control. More detailed studies
in using resonant converter for compensating the leakage inductances have been conducted by Cho et al. [18], [21], [22]. Out of
the four stagger-tuned link circuits, the voltage-in-current-out
link in [24] has been found to have the lowest circulating
current and thus is the most efficient link circuit when operating
at frequencies near and above the second resonant frequency
of the doubly tunned circuit. However, their studies employed
frequency modulation at frequencies much higher than the
second resonant frequency of the doubly tunned circuit with
a wide frequency range for controlling the converter at a less
than ideal output-to-input voltage transfer ratio of 0.45 [18]
and could not fully demonstrate an effective control method for
output voltage regulation under varying transformer coupling
coefficient, input voltage and load.

1932-4545/$25.00 2009 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2009

In this paper, we present a pulsewidth-modulation (PWM)

control method using a phase-locked loop (PLL) for transcutaneous power regulation. The transformer design is based
on a generic transformer model whose coupling coefficient is
changing with transformer alignment and gap. The transformer
model and its equivalent parameters commonly used in transcutaneous transformer design are given in Section II [10],
[14], [18], [21], [22]. In Section III, resonant tank circuits using
external capacitors and the inductances of the transcutaneous
transformer are studied. Frequency-domain analysis is performed for the input-to-output voltage transfer function in order
to obtain an operating frequency at which the voltage transfer
function is least sensitive to both load and transformer variations. Design and control of a transcutaneous power converter
under varying coupling coefficient, load and input voltage are
presented in Section IV. Our proposed control method is able
to provide output regulation at a locked switching frequency
under varying load and coupling coefficient, and with optimized efficiency. A prototypic transcutaneous power regulator
has been built and its static and dynamic performances are
evaluated in Section IV-B.
II. MODELING OF TRANSCUTANEOUS TRANSFORMER
We use the transformer model shown in Fig. 1(a) to represent
a transcutaneous transformer. We have built a transformer using
Planar Core E64/10/50 with air gap length (depth of human
skin) ranging from 10 mm to 20 mm to emulate the transcutaneous transformer for testing and design purposes [10], [14],
[18], [21], [22]. A motor is incorporated to create a time varying
gap length so as to emulate the effects of breathing and body
movement. It should be noted that although the secondary windings of this sample transformer are not actually implantable in
the body of a patient, the parameters measured from this transformer do resemble closely those of some sophisticated transcutaneous transformer designs [11][23]. Therefore, as our focus
here is on the design and control of a power regulator for transcutaneous converter application, the sample transformer should
adequately emulate a real transcutaneous transformer. Some of
the parameters measured for various coupling coefficients are
shown in Table I, where

(1)
. As indicated
and the turns ratio of the transformer is
in Table I, all inductance values change with , i.e., air gap or
and
misalignment length. Normally, external capacitances
are added to form resonant tanks with the transformer inductances [18]. The frequencies of resonant tanks are thus varying
with changing .

Fig. 1. Transformer model and compensation circuits.

TABLE I
TRANSCUTANEOUS TRANSFORMER PARAMETERS

has been compensated using external capacitors

and
to
to
facilitate energy transfer from the ac equivalent source
. The components in the secondary side
the equivalent load
of the ideal transformer are transformed to their equivalents at
the primary side shown in Fig. 1(c). Further reduction using a
Thvenins equivalent circuit is shown in Fig. 1(d), which is
suitable for calculation of the input-to-output voltage transfer
. From Figs. 1(c) and (d), we have
function

(2)
(3)

III. FREQUENCY-DOMAIN ANALYSIS OF RESONANT TANK

CIRCUITS WITH TRANSCUTANEOUS TRANSFORMER
A frequency-domain equivalent circuit for the transcutaneous
power converter is shown in Fig. 1(b) where the transformer

(4)

CHEN et al.: TRANSCUTANEOUS POWER REGULATOR FOR ARTIFICIAL HEARTS

25

TABLE IV
POWER COMPONENTS USED IN THE TRANSCUTANEOUS CONVERTER

Fig. 2. Transcutaneous converter.

TABLE II
PERCENTAGE CHANGE OF INDUCTANCE RATIO WHEN CHANGING k

TABLE III
DESIGN SPECIFICATION OF THE TRANSCUTANEOUS CONVERTER

where

Fig. 3. Calculated frequency response of input-to-output voltage gain of the

transcutaneous converter.

(5)
(6)
The input-to-output voltage transfer function is determined from
(4) as

(7)

Fig. 4. Measured frequency response of input-to-output voltage gain of the

transcutaneous converter.

where

(8)
It can be readily seen from (7) that if
, then
is independent of
. Solving for roots of (8), we obtain the frequencies
is independent of
at which

(9)

(10)

Fig. 5. Phase angle between the primary inductance current and the driving
voltage when using the proposed PWM and PLL control.

(11)

(12)

where

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2009

Fig. 8. Detailed CD4046 control circuitry.

Fig. 6. Calculated duty cycle to input-to-output voltage gain transfer function

for different loading conditions.

Fig. 9. Detailed UCC3895 voltage error amplifier compensation circuitry.

Fig. 7. Block diagram of control circuitry.

Fig. 10. Prototype transcutaneous power regulator.

From Fig. 1(c), the input impedance

is given as
(13)

which can be rewritten as

(14)

It has been shown [18] that if the two leakage inductances can
be compensated using external capacitances satisfying
, then
and
are the two
roots of
and
in (7). However, the compensation
technique can only be optimized at one particular at which
holds. When changes,
and
the equality
change as well, making
deviating from .

CHEN et al.: TRANSCUTANEOUS POWER REGULATOR FOR ARTIFICIAL HEARTS

27

Fig. 11. Output voltage transient response of the transcutaneous regulator under a step change of load. (a) From min to full load at k
; (c) from min to full load at k ; (d) from full to min load at k .
at k

; (b) from full to min load

We propose here to use capacitances satisfying

(23)

(15)
as an additional constraint in compensating the leakage inductances. In doing so, using the approximations

Then, we have
(24)

(16)

(25)

we can reduce (7), (9), and (10) to

(26)
(17)
(18)

Equations (25) and (26) are useful for evaluating the capacitor
voltage stresses when deciding on the choice of .

(19)
(20)

IV. DESIGN AND CONTROL OF TRANSCUTANEOUS

POWER CONVERTER

The required ratios of

for compensating the inductances
and
in Table II.
are shown in the columns under
This clearly verifies the better accuracy of the proposed compenand
in achieving
sation for the particular transformer at
.
For the subsequent analysis, the compensation method (15)
and approximation (16) will be used. We define
(21)
(22)

The transcutaneous power converter shown in Fig. 2 has

been built according to the specification shown in Table III.
The components used are shown in Table IV. The calculated
and measured frequency responses of input-to-output voltage
gain without the control circuitry of Fig. 2 are shown in Figs. 3
and 4, respectively, indicating the lossless ideal model matches
well with the experimental circuit. The frequencies
and
in Figs. 3 and 4 are
in (10) for minimum
and maximum s, respectively.
Previously, frequencies well above the maximum value of
in (10) for all s were used for a frequency modulation scheme
for controlling the output voltage [18]. However, such a design

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Fig. 12. Output voltage transient response of the transcutaneous regulator at full load under a step change of input voltage V . (a) V
V
65 V at k ; (c) V
65 V at k
; (d) V
65 V at k .

= 40

= 35

= 35

did not take advantage of load insensitivity and small resonant

tank circulation currents to operate the converter near and just
.
above
A. Phase-Locking Control
We propose here a control technique based on PWM and
phase locking, as shown in Fig. 5, for ensuring operation at a
. The operation of the control
frequency above and close to
circuit is briefly explained as follows. The switching frequency
of the converter is clamped between
and
kHz
as shown in Fig. 4. A digital signal
is produced using the zero crossing of the pri, as shown in Fig. 5. The phase differmary inductor current
and
is calculated and is locked to a fixed
ence between
by modulating the switching frequency of
phase angle
the converter. The angle is adjusted at a value large enough
for ensuring zero voltage switching of the full bridge switches.
The operation frequency of the converter is therefore locked just
for full load condition under varying . When there
above
are changes for either a higher input voltage or lighter load,
PWM will kick in, as illustrated in Fig. 5, whereby the converter
and at a phase
will operate at a frequency a bit higher than
.
angle
From Fig. 5, we have
(27)
(28)

= 4065 V at k

; (b)

(29)
where
is the duty cycle of the PWM control. The input-tooutput voltage gain is modified to
(30)
where the PLL circuitry will find a frequency satisfying (27).
in (7) can be obtained for calculating
in
Thus,
for
(30). Fig. 6 shows the the relation between and
and
at different loading conditions.
Fig. 7 shows a block diagram of the control circuitry, implementing the PWM and PLL control of transcutaneous power
converter. The implementation details are explained as follows.
is sensed using a current transformer.
The inductor current
In the current sensing transformer secondary, the amplitude
is also obtained by a peak-tracking circuitry.
and
are compared using
Scaled down amplitudes
the LM311 shown in Fig. 7 to produce a square waveform
which leads
by a phase angle
which is adjusted by .
is extracted as
using the logic circuit
The phase angle of
CD4081 from two of the gate control signals produced by the
PWM controller UCC3895. The phases of and are fed for
comparison into the PLL controller CD4046 whose frequency
output overrides the switching frequency of UCC3895 after
synchronous pulse conversion using CD4528. When the phases
and the phase relationship given in
are locked,
Fig. 5 is achieved. A detailed circuitry of the PLL is given in

CHEN et al.: TRANSCUTANEOUS POWER REGULATOR FOR ARTIFICIAL HEARTS

29

Fig. 15. Measured converter efficiency of the transcutaneous power regulator

V for different loading currents and coupling coefficients.
at V

= 30

Fig. 13. Output voltage transient response of the transcutaneous regulator at

full load under a change of transcutaneous transformer gap between 10 and 20
and k
.
mm, i.e., between k

Fig. 16. Measured converter efficiency of the transcutaneous power regulator

V for different loading currents and coupling coefficients.
at V

= 45

Fig. 14. Measured converter efficiency of the transcutaneous power regulator

at full load for different input voltages and coupling coefficients.

Fig. 8.
and
define the frequency range
while
and
define the lowest switching frequency
of the system. The compensation of the PLL is controlled by
,
and . In practice, we use
,
and
. The switching frequency is initially set at
during start-up to ensure successful phase locking. The
compensation circuit of the voltage error amplifier of UCC3895
in Fig. 7 is redrawn in Fig. 9, where the component values
are chosen for fastest output voltage transient response, i.e.,
,
and
. However, as
in actual implementation, the voltage is sampling via some
wireless link, slower-response compensation circuit should
,
be used. We find that using component values
and
, the circuit can still be stable
with much slower transient response for the worst case of slow
wireless voltage feedback links.

Fig. 17. Measured converter efficiency of the transcutaneous power regulator

at V
V for different loading currents and coupling coefficients.

= 60

B. Experimental Evaluations
A prototype of the proposed transcutaneous power regulator
has been constructed according to the circuit shown in Fig. 2
and control circuit described in Fig. 7. A photo of the prototype is shown in Fig. 10. The measured transient responses of
the transcutaneous power regulator when the load, input voltage
and coupling coefficient undergo step changes are, respectively,
shown in Figs. 1113. The measured efficiency of the regulator
V,
V and
V are
at full load,
given in Figs. 1417, respectively. The input power (excluding

Fig. 18. Loss analysis of the transcutaneous power regulator at

, for different loading currents.
and k

= 30 V

the control circuitry) to the regulator is measured using Voltech

PM100 power analyzer and the output power is calculated from
averaging products of voltage and current values taken with two

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2009

Agilent 34401A digital multimeters. The loss mechanism is further studied experimentally by measuring the power input to
primary and power output from the secondary of the transcutaneous transformer. The waveforms of the voltages and currents on both transformer primary and secondary are measured
for one switching cycle using a digital storage oscilloscope. The
efficiency curve of the transformer is calculated and shown as
the upper curve in Fig. 18 for different loads. The middle curve
in Fig. 18 shows the converter efficiency including the loss of
the transcutaneous transformer and estimated conduction loss
of MOS switches and output rectifying diodes. The lower refer, which
ence curve is the measured converter efficiency at
is also shown previously in Fig. 15.

V. CONCLUSION
The design of a transcutaneous power regulator for artificial
hearts has been studied in this paper. The key challenge is the
varying transformer coupling that makes control difficult for
achieving output voltage regulation under varying load and the
constraints of frequency modulation. It has been shown in this
paper that it is possible to operate the regulator at a locked frequency by proper design and appropriate compensation of the
inductances, leading to tight output regulation with optimized
efficiency under varying transformer coupling. Compensation
methods have been studied in the frequency domain and applied to a capacitor compensated transcutaneous transformer
power converter. Based on the results of the analysis, a new
control method using both PWM and phase locking control has
been proposed. The power regulator has been evaluated for step
changes in the input voltage, output load and transformer gap
length. Results showing excellent transient response and efficiency have been obtained.

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Apr. 1987.

Qianhong Chen (M06) was born in Hubei Province,

China, in 1974. She received the B.S., M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Nanjing
University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, in 1995, 1998 and 2001, respectively.
In 2001, she joined the Teaching and Research
Division of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
China, and is currently an Associate Professor with
the Aero-Power Sci-Tech Center in the College
of Automation Engineering. From April 2007 to
January 2008, she was a Research Associate in the Department of Electronic
and Information Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong
Kong, China. Her research interests include soft-switching dc/dc converters,
application of integrated-magnetics, and contactless resonant converters.

CHEN et al.: TRANSCUTANEOUS POWER REGULATOR FOR ARTIFICIAL HEARTS

Siu Chung Wong (M01) received the B.Sc. degree

in physics from the University of Hong Kong, Hong
Kong, in 1986, the M.Phil. degree in electronics from
the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Southampton, Southampton, U.K., in 1997.
He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering
at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.
His research interests include modeling of power
converters, nonlinear analysis of power electronics,
LED lighting systems, automobile lighting systems, and Internet traffic analysis.
Dr. Wong is a member of the Electrical College, The Institution of Engineers,
Australia.

Chi K. Tse (M90SM97F06) received the

B.Eng. degree (first class hons) in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, in 1987 and 1991,
respectively.
He is presently Chair Professor and Head of Department of Electronic and Information Engineering,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. His
research interests include power electronics, complex
networks and nonlinear systems. He is the author of
Linear Circuit Analysis (Addison-Wesley, 1998) and
Complex Behavior of Switching Power Converters (CRC Press, 2003), coauthor
of Chaos-Based Digital Communication Systems (Springer-Verlag, 2003) and
Chaotic Signal Reconstruction with Applications to Chaos-Based Communications (World Scientific, 2007), and co-holder of a U.S. patent and two pending
patents.
Dr. Tse was awarded the L.R. East Prize by the Institution of Engineers, Australia, in 1987, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS Prize Paper
Award in 2001, and the International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications Best Paper Award in 2003. In 2007, he was awarded the Distinguished
International Research Fellowship by the University of Calgary, Canada. While
with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, he received twice the Presidents

31

Award for Achievement in Research, the Facultys Best Researcher Award, the
Research Grant Achievement Award and a few other teaching awards. From
1999 to 2001, he served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS PART IFUNDAMENTAL THEORY AND APPLICATIONS,
and since 1999 he has been an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS
ON POWER ELECTRONICS In 2005, he served as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.
Presently he also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Circuits and Systems
Society Newsletter, Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS
AND SYSTEMS PART IREGULAR PAPERS, International Journal of Systems Science, IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, and International Journal of
Circuit Theory and Applications, and Guest Editor of a few other journals.

Xinbo Ruan (M97SM02) was born in Hubei

Province, China, in 1970. He received the B.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Nanjing, China, in 1991 and 1996, respectively.
In 1996, he joined the Teaching and Research Division of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Nanjing
University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China,
and became a Professor in 2002 with the College of
Automation Engineering, where he has been engaged
in teaching and research in the field of power electronics. From August to October 2007, he was a Research Fellow in the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, Hong Kong, China. Since March 2008, he joined the College of
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and
Technology, Wuhan, China. His main research interests include soft-switching
dc/dc converters, soft-switching inverters, power factor correction converters,
modeling the converters, power electronics system integration and renewable
energy generation system. He has published three books, and over 100 technical papers in journals and conferences.
Dr. Ruan was awarded the Delta Scholar by the Delta Environment and Education Fund in 2003, and was awarded the Special Appointed Professorship
of the Chang Jiang Scholars Program by the Ministry of Education of China in
2007. He is Guest Professor of Beijing Jiaotong University, China, and Hefei
University of Technology, China.